U.S. Commerce Dept. Announces Final Coated Paper Duty Margins

WASHINGTON, DC—Sept. 21, 2010—Appleton Coated LLC, NewPage Corp. and Sappi Fine Paper North America, together with the United Steelworkers (USW), welcomed the Department of Commerce's announcement of final antidumping and countervailing duty margins on coated paper imports from China and Indonesia.

Today's announcement of final antidumping and countervailing duty margins sets out the tariffs that will be applied to unfairly traded imports of coated paper from China and Indonesia that benefited from subsidies or were dumped in the U.S. market. The Department of Commerce's action updates the preliminary margins that were announced earlier in the consideration of the case which was filed jointly by the USW and the three companies.

The antidumping margins announced by DOC on imports from Indonesia were 20.13 percent and ranged from 7.6 to 135.83 percent on imports from China. Countervailing duties on products from Indonesia will be subject to tariffs of 17.94 percent and on Chinese imports range from 17.64 to 178.03 percent. If the ITC votes affirmatively in their upcoming injury determination, these rates will apply for the term of the relief. The ITC will vote on October 19 and the transmittal of its views to DOC will occur on November 4.

The companies and the USW filed unfair trade cases on September 23, 2009 with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that certain coated paper from China and Indonesia had been dumped and subsidized resulting in injury to the domestic industry and its employees. The paper products covered by the petitions include coated paper in sheet form used in high-quality writing, printing and other graphic applications, with a GE brightness rating of 80 or higher and weighing up to 340 grams per square meter.

"Today's announcement validates the allegations the industry made almost a year ago as to how Chinese and Indonesian coated paper exporters were engaged in unfair trade practices. Correction of the dumping and subsidization by the imposition of duties to offset the margins announced today will help provide some more certainty that a competitive market will exist in these products," said Sandra Van Ert, president and chief executive officer of Appleton Coated LLC.

So the paper companies forgot their clients. You can now buy the whole printed product from China instead of just the paper. Domestic mills are free to raise their prices and who wins? It will soon cost more to print on the more expensive paper than to just buy the whole thing off-shore. Am I missing something?

The only ones that get hurt by this move are all the US printers out there who have to pay a lot more for the same paper! All these big US paper companies are now flexing their power and making us small guys pay so much more for paper. I hope this tariff goes away really soon so we can start buying from China once again. I will not support any of these three paper companies or the old unions that have no place in today’s business world. This is bad news for everyone in the printing industry except for the big paper companies!

Tariffs on paper help the US paper industry but not the US printing industry. In additon to paper, they should also place high tariffs on printed products coming from China. We have all lost printing due to cheap chinese paper and laber.

How about the Dept. of Commerce
checking into the dumping of Chinese printing in the US market. They are selling printing at 30 to40% below our cost. So now we will have a prosperous paper industry, but no printers!

You are both missing the point. Unfair trade doesn’t only effect the paper industry. It has a negative impact on all manufacturing in this country. Until we all wake up and realize that this country can not prosper without a strong manufacturing base we will continue to hurt our economy. Simply put we can’t compete against child labor, impoverished workers and unfair unfair manufacturing practices.